September 03, 2007

Basra Withdrawal: Read It There, Read It Here

by DemFromCT

The NY Times has a story on the British pull-out, as it makes it way into American press coverage.

The British Army began withdrawing from its last base in Basra’s
city center early Monday, a move that will leave Iraq’s second-largest
city without foreign forces for the first time since the American-led
invasion in 2003.

That's the story, but what's missing from the Times is the allied criticism found in the Brit papers. From the Times (UK):

The pullout came as two of Britain’s most influential generals
during the Iraq war delivered scathing attacks on the Americans for
their handling of the campaign after Saddam’s defeat. Major-General Tim Cross, who supervised reconstruction projects alongside his American counterparts in 2003, joined General Sir Mike Jackson [see Meteor Blades' post],
former head of the Army, in criticising the US for ignoring British
advice. General Cross, a Royal Engineer, is retired but he was a hugely
respected figure in the Army and had unrivalled experience in dealing
with postwar nation-building. He revealed that he gave advice to Donald
Rumsfeld, the former US Defence Secretary, about the size of the force
needed to tackle the challenges after Saddam’s downfall, but was
ignored.

The attacks by General Jackson, the former Chief of the General
Staff, in his autobiography, and General Cross, in an interview with
the Sunday Mirror, have laid bare the anger felt by the British
military over the way that Mr Rumsfeld dismissed all the warning signs
of a potential disaster in Iraq.

Although much has been said about the failures of the American
strategy in Iraq, not least by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, the former
British Ambassador at the United Nations and later Tony Blair’s special
envoy to Baghdad, the strong criticism from the two generals has added
to the growing sense of a rift between Washington and London.

This second criticism by a top British general can be found in AP, CNN and WaPo reports from the last twenty-four hours. Reuters adds why this is all surfacing now:

The unusually outspoken comments by former top military men follow
weeks of commentary, mainly in the U.S. press, suggesting British
forces have failed in southern Iraq and are set to flee.

Defence analyst Charles Heyman told Reuters the criticism was
surfacing "because everybody realises this is now a failed policy and
they are all casting around for scapegoats".

"Why didn't someone resign at the time and say this is foolish and foolhardy?" he said.

He said the recriminations were not helpful to future military and
diplomatic relations between Washington and London, which have
traditionally boasted of a "special relationship".

Why, indeed? As Republicans continue to lead American policy over a
cliff with the justification that as bad as the disastrous policy is,
any other approach would be worse (trust us!), it is worth a reminder
that it has never been
the unanimous view of the generals, at least when they speak their
mind. But the Bush administration is not above blaming our allies for
problems of their own making (and the Brits have some suspicions
he will). After all, this Administration never takes responsibility for
anything they've done, and blaming others is the one thing they do well.

I think we may discover eventually that the problem was mostly about power within the administration. Recall that the State Department did do extensive planning for post combat, but Rummy and in particular the neo-cons in DOD scotched that plan at the last minute, and among other things, took the Congressional Appropriations unto themselves for doing the post-combat reconstruction operations. In particular, George Packer's "Assassins Gate" has quite detailed material on this, mostly sourced to Jay Garner and the people he had on his small team. DOD provided Garner with only two weeks to plan his effort, and when congress decided to hold a hearing on the plan just before the invasion, they whisked him off to Kuwait so as to make him unavailable to Congress. Packer describes Garner as taking about a day to go to the Defense Department Library to review the planning George Marshall did for the occupation of Germany -- planning that took place over six years actually -- but Garner had just one day to begin to comprehend the Marshall planning documents. He also had one meeting with Bush -- but Bush would not talk plans, instead he talked Florida Cattle Ranching.

It was during this conflict between State and DOD over leadership of the post-combat phase, that Bush began to make his speeches about Freedom and Democracy, with the lead speech being given at American Heritage. My own interpretation of Bush's sudden flight to rhetoric about Democracy and all that, was really about his inability to square a conflict between the Powell faction and the Rummy faction in his own circle.

According to Packer, Garner was in Kuwait without any form of transportation -- he had no cars, no planes at his command to take his staff into Baghdad, he had few radios, virtually no computers -- essentially he had to beg them from DOD even though he was DOD. Everything he did had to be run back through Central Command to DC, and it was Cheney and the neo-cons in the Pentagon who micro managed him.

What made them replace Garner with Paul Bremer? Garner apparently had negotiated with a group of Imams and former mid level Sunni Officers a plan to establish a police organization, and they were just in the planning process on that. (same folk Bush visited today.) All hell broke loose in the Pentagon at that news -- and they immediately sent Bremer who was recommended to Cheney by Henry the Kissinger.

Frankly, I doubt if Bush has ever looked at, much less read Packer's reconstruction of the decision making done in his name -- in fact I doubt if he really comprehended the decisions. Instead he was doing PR stuff -- Mission Accomplished tricks with his codpiece, more freedom and democracy flights of fancy.

I still think Packer nailed Bush with his description of Bush's one and only meeting with Garner before he was sent off to establish a governing authority in Iraq. Garner described Bush as inattentive, did not look at the outlines (he was told to make them no more than two pages all set as powerpoints) for the stages of his plan, He described Bush as concerned everyone had enough coffee, that he kept exercising his legs while sitting, in otherwords, Bush could not follow along with about a half-hour of detail. Then as the meeting broke up, Bush started the conversation about Florida Cattle Ranching -- Garner you see was raised on a Florida Cattle Ranch -- and he never asked the first question about Iraq plans.

For myself, I think our boy has a fairly serious attention defecit disorder, and a reading comprehension issue. He reads speeches in a passable way, but I am not certain he can look at even the slightest complexity in a planning document, and comprehend. Picking up on the irrelevant, such as Cattle Ranching, is cover for these profound problems.

Who to blame? -- well we need to look at the Republican Party folk who decided this guy would be a good President back in 1997 and 1998. They wanted a power center they could manipulate with a blooming idiot in charge. They got it.

I can't say about the ADD, but actually Bush is fairly bright from what I have heard. The problem is that he only pays attention to things that interest him, or are pleasant. Of course that goes along with ADD.

I would never protest at someone saying there is some "arrested development" in the President.